1. Field
The present description relates to the field of monitoring the operation of a computer system and, in particular, to monitoring activity in a partitioned service processor through virtual machines.
2. Related Art
Platforms that support virtualization normally use virtual machine systems (e.g. Virtual Machine Monitor or VMM) to orchestrate and provision virtual machines (VMs) on the fly. The VMM software system typically co-exists with the operating system (OS) to provide the functionality of resident software on the platform controlling access to all the resources that belong to that platform. On top of this resident software layer, sits the VMs running their individual applications within their own operating system shell. They either time-share the underlying physical resources or simultaneously execute with dedicated physical resources. This mapping from virtual machines to physical machines is achieved by the VMM either independently or in conjunction with the OS. These VMM controlled physical resources within a node or platform or blade can be instrumented to expose management rich information for use by the remote service processor.
A VM management platform, such as Intel Active Management Technology (iAMT), can be used to provide a secure execution environment in the form of an adjunct processor or a virtual partition that is isolated from the host processor for executing third party management capability extensions, called Capability Modules (CM's). iAMT implements a modular and extensible common platform interface called the Sensor Effector Interface (SEI). iAMT CMs can use SEI as a single interface for managing heterogeneous devices and instruments on the host platform. SEI uses a generic data virtual machine structure called a Resource Data Record (RDR) for describing managed resources including the sensors and controls, their relationships, and the operations which can be performed on them. It uses different types of RDRs for performing these tasks such as Sensor RDRs, Effector RDRs, Event RDRs and Association RDRs.
The basic structure of the RDR includes an RDR header and a data record. The header provides general information about the RDR such as the ID and the RDR type. The data record provides the monitored information that is of interest to the management platform. This information is specific to the RDR in question and may include information such as time stamps, source, resource codes, data fields or any other particular information for that type.
In order to access these RDRs, the SEI subsystem provides two interfaces, the mailbox interface through which messages can be exchanged between the management platform (iAMT) and the host platform in a secure manner, and a DMA memory scan interface through which the management platform (iAMT) can read the sensors or effectors directly off of the host's physical memory. Additionally, the SEI subsystem leverages existing platform management protocols such as IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) to access serial devices on the platform directly.
IPMI provides a technique for monitoring host hardware. However, there are no existing techniques for describing and managing Virtual Machine Monitors (VMMs) using such an interface.